LUYỆN ĐỌC TIẾNG ANH QUA CÁC TÁC PHẨM VĂN HỌC –MOBY DICK HERMAN MELVILLE CHAPTER 54 doc

MOBY DICK

HERMAN MELVILLE


CHAPTER 54



The Town-Ho's Story

(As told at the Golden Inn)

The Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region round about there, is much
like some noted four corners of a great highway, where you meet more
travellers than in any other part.

It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another homeward-bound
whaleman, the Town-Ho,* was encountered. She was manned almost wholly by
Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave us strong news of Moby
Dick. To some the general interest in the White Whale was now wildly
heightened by a circumstance of the Town-Ho's story, which seemed obscurely
to involve with the whale a certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those
so called judgments of God which at times are said to overtake some men. This
latter circumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, forming what may
be called the secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never reached the
ears of Captain Ahab or his mates. For that secret part of the story was unknown
to the captain of the Town-Ho himself. It was the private property of three
confederate white seamen of that ship, one of whom, it seems, communicated it
to Tashtego with Romish injunctions of secrecy, but the following night
Tashtego rambled in his sleep, and revealed so much of it in that way, that when

he was wakened he could not well withhold the rest. Nevertheless, so potent an
influence did this thing have on those seamen in the Pequod who came to the
full knowledge of it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they
governed in this matter, that they kept the secret among themselves so that it
never transpired abaft the Pequod's main-mast. Interweaving in its proper place
this darker thread with the story as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of
this strange affair I now proceed to put on lasting record.

*The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the mast-head, still
used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terrapin.

For my humor's sake, I shall preserve the style in which I once narrated it at
Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanish friends, one saint's eve, smoking upon
the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden Inn. Of those fine cavaliers, the young
Dons, Pedro and Sebastian, were on the closer terms with me; and hence the
interluding questions they occasionally put, and which are duly answered at the
time.

"Some two years prior to my first learning the events which I am about
rehearsing to you, gentlemen, the Town-Ho, Sperm Whaler of Nantucket, was
cruising in your Pacific here, not very many days' sail eastward from the eaves
of this good Golden Inn. She was somewhere to the northward of the Line. One
morning upon handling the pumps according to daily usage, it was observed that
she made more water in her hold than common. They supposed a sword-fish
had stabbed her, gentlemen. But the captain, having some unusual reason for
believing that rare good luck awaited him in those latitudes; and therefore being
very averse to quit them, and the leak not being then considered at all
dangerous, though, indeed, they could not find it after searching the hold as low
down as was possible in rather heavy weather, the ship still continued her
cruisings, the mariners working at the pumps at wide and easy intervals; but no

good luck came; more days went by and not only was the leak yet undiscovered,
but it sensibly increased. So much so, that now taking some alarm, the captain,
making all sail, stood away for the nearest harbor among the islands, there to
have his hull hove out and repaired.

"Though no small passage was before her, yet, if the commonest chance
favoured, he did not at all fear that his ship would founder by the way, because
his pumps were of the best, and being periodically relieved at them, those six-
and-thirty men of his could easily keep the ship free; never mind if the leak
should double on her. In truth, well nigh the whole of this passage being
attended by very prosperous breezes, the Town-Ho had all but certainly arrived
in perfect safety at her port without the occurrence of the least fatality, had it not
been for the brutal overbearing of Radney, the mate, a Vineyarder, and the
bitterly provoked vengeance of Steelkilt, a Lakeman and desperado from
Buffalo.

"'Lakeman!- Buffalo! Pray, what is a Lakeman, and where is Buffalo?' said Don
Sebastian, rising in his swinging mat of grass.

"On the eastern shore of our Lake Erie, Don; but- I crave your courtesy- may
be, you shall soon hear further of all that. Now, gentlemen, in square-sail brigs
and three-masted ships, well nigh as large and stout as any that ever sailed out
of your old Callao to far Manilla; this Lakeman, in the land-locked heart of our
America, had yet been nurtured by all those agrarian freebooting impressions
popularly connected with the open ocean. For in their interflowing aggregate,
those grand fresh-water seas of ours,- Erie, and Ontario, and Huron, and
Superior, and Michigan,- possess an ocean-like expansiveness, with many of the
ocean's noblest traits; with many of its rimmed varieties of races and of climes.
They contain round archipelagoes of romantic isles, even as the Polynesian
waters do; in large part, are shored by two great contrasting nations, as the

Atlantic is; they furnish long maritime approaches to our numerous territorial
colonies from the East, dotted all round their banks; here and there are frowned
upon by batteries, and by the goat-like craggy guns of lofty Mackinaw; they
have heard the fleet thunderings of naval victories; at intervals, they yield their
beaches to wild barbarians, whose red painted faces flash from out their peltry
wigwams; for leagues and leagues are flanked by ancient and unentered forests,
where the gaunt pines stand like serried lines of kings in Gothic genealogies;
those same woods harboring wild Afric beasts of prey, and silken creatures
whose exported furs give robes to Tartar Emperors; they mirror the paved
capitals of Buffalo and Cleveland, as well as Winnebago villages; they float
alike the full-rigged merchant ship, the armed cruiser of the State, the steamer,
and the beech canoe; they are swept by Borean and dismasting blasts as direful
as any that lash the salted wave; they know what shipwrecks are, for out of sight
of land, however inland, they have drowned full many a midnight ship with all
its shrieking crew. Thus, gentlemen, though an inlander, Steelkilt was wild-
ocean born, and wild-ocean nurtured; as much of an audacious mariner as any.
And for Radney, though in his infancy he may have laid him down on the lone
Nantucket beach, to nurse at his maternal sea; though in after life he had long
followed our austere Atlantic and your contemplative Pacific; yet was he quite
as vengeful and full of social quarrel as the backwoods seaman, fresh from the
latitudes of buckhorn handled Bowie-knives. Yet was this Nantucketer a man
with some good-hearted traits; and this Lakeman, a mariner, who though a sort
of devil indeed, might yet by inflexible firmness, only tempered by that
common decency of human recognition which is the meanest slave's right; thus
treated, this Steelkilt had long been retained harmless and docile. At all events,
he had proved so thus far; but Radney was doomed and made mad, and
Steelkilt- but, gentlemen, you shall hear.

"It was not more than a day or two at the furthest after pointing her prow for her
island haven, that the Town-Ho's leak seemed again increasing, but only so as to

require an hour or more at the pumps every day. You must know that in a settled
and civilized ocean like our Atlantic, for example, some skippers think little of
pumping their whole way across it; though of a still, sleepy night, should the
officer of the deck happen to forget his duty in that respect, the probability
would be that he and his shipmates would never again remember it, on account
of all hands gently subsiding to the bottom. Nor in the solitary and savage seas
far from you to the westward, gentlemen, is it altogether unusual for ships to
keep clanging at their pump-handles in full chorus even for a voyage of
considerable length! that is, if it lie along a tolerably accessible coast, or if any
other reasonable retreat is afforded them. It is only when a leaky vessel is in
some very out of the way part of those waters, some really landless latitude, that
her captain begins to feel a little anxious.

"Much this way had it been with the Town-Ho; so when her leak was found
gaining once more, there was in truth some small concern manifested by several
of her company; especially by Radney the mate. He commanded the upper sails
to be well hoisted, sheeted home anew, and every way expanded to the breeze.
Now this Radney, I suppose, was as little of a coward, and as little inclined to
any sort of nervous apprehensiveness touching his own person as any fearless,
unthinking creature on land or on sea that you can conveniently gentlemen.
Therefore when he betrayed this imagine, solicitude about the safety of the ship,
some of the seamen declared that it was only on account of his being a part
owner in her. So when they were working that evening at the pumps, there was
on this head no small gamesomeness slily going on among them, as they stood
with their feet continually overflowed by the rippling clear water; clear as any
mountain spring, gentlemen- that bubbling from the pumps ran across the deck,
and poured itself out in steady spouts at the lee scupper-holes.

"Now, as you well know, it is not seldom the case in this conventional world of
ours- watery or otherwise; that when a person placed in command over his

fellow-men finds one of them to be very significantly his superior in general
pride of manhood, straightway against that man he conceives an unconquerable
dislike and bitterness; and if he had a chance he will pull down and pulverize
that subaltern's tower, and make a little heap of dust of it. Be this conceit of
mine as it may, gentlemen, at all events Steelkilt was a tall and noble animal
with a head like a Roman, and a flowing golden beard like the tasseled housings
of your last viceroy's snorting charger; and a brain, and a heart, and a soul in
him, gentlemen, which had made Steelkilt Charlemagne, had he been born son
to Charlemagne's father. But Radney, the mate, was ugly as a mule; yet as
hardy, as stubborn, as malicious. He did not love Steelkilt, and Steelkilt knew it.

"Espying the mate drawing near as he was toiling at the pump with the rest, the
Lakeman affected not to notice him, but unawed, went on with his gay
banterings.

"'Aye, aye, my merry lads, it's a lively leak this; hold a cannikin, one of ye, and
let's have a taste. By the Lord, it's worth bottling! I tell ye what, men, old Rad's
investment must go for it! he had best cut away his part of the hull and tow it
home. The fact is, boys, that sword-fish only began the job; he's come back
again with a gang of ship-carpenters, saw-fish, and file-fish, and what not; and
the whole posse of 'em are now hard at work cutting and slashing at the bottom;
making improvements, I suppose. If old Rad were here now, I'd tell him to jump
overboard and scatter They're playing the devil with his estate, I can tell him.
But he's a simple old soul,- Rad, and a beauty too. Boys, they say the rest of his
property is invested in looking-glasses. I wonder if he'd give a poor devil like
me the model of his nose.'

"'Damn your eyes! what's that pump stopping for?' roared Radney, pretending
not to have heard the sailors' talk. 'Thunder away at it!'

'Aye, aye, sir,' said Steelkilt, merry as a cricket. 'Lively, boys, lively, now!' And
with that the pump clanged like fifty fire-engines; the men tossed their hats off
to it, and ere long that peculiar gasping of the lungs was heard which denotes
the fullest tension of life's utmost energies.

"Quitting the pump at last, with the rest of his band, the Lakeman went forward
all panting, and sat himself down on the windlass; his face fiery red, his eyes
bloodshot, and wiping the profuse sweat from his brow. Now what cozening
fiend it was, gentlemen, that possessed Radney to meddle with such a man in
that corporeally exasperated state, I know not; but so it happened. Intolerably
striding along the deck, the mate commanded him to get a broom and sweep
down the planks, and also a shovel, and remove some offensive matters
consequent upon allowing a pig to run at large.

"Now, gentlemen, sweeping a ship's deck at sea is a piece of household work
which in all times but raging gales is regularly attended to every evening; it has
been known to be done in the case of ships actually foundering at the time.
Such, gentlemen, is the inflexibility of sea-usages and the instinctive love of
neatness in seamen; some of whom would not willingly drown without first
washing their faces. But in all vessels this broom business is the prescriptive
province of the boys, if boys there be aboard. Besides, it was the stronger men
in the Town-Ho that had been divided into gangs, taking turns at the pumps; and
being the most athletic seaman of them all, Steelkilt had been regularly assigned
captain of one of the gangs; consequently he should have been freed from any
trivial business not connected with truly nautical duties, such being the case
with his comrades. I mention all these particulars so that you may understand
exactly how this affair stood between the two men.

"But there was more than this: the order about the shovel was almost as plainly
meant to sting and insult Steelkilt, as though Radney had spat in his face. Any

man who has gone sailor in a whale-ship will understand this; and all this and
doubtless much more, the Lakeman fully comprehended when the mate uttered
his command. But as he sat still for a moment, and as he steadfastly looked into
the mate's malignant eye and perceived the stacks of powder-casks heaped up in
him and the slow-match silently burning along towards them; as he instinctively
saw all this, that strange forbearance and unwillingness to stir up the deeper
passionateness in any already ireful being- a repugnance most felt, when felt at
all, by really valiant men even when aggrieved- this nameless phantom feeling,
gentlemen, stole over Steelkilt.

"Therefore, in his ordinary tone, only a little broken by the bodily exhaustion he
was temporarily in, he answered him saying that sweeping the deck was not his
business, and he would not do it. And then, without at all alluding to the shovel,
he pointed to three lads, as the customary sweepers; who, not being billeted at
the pumps, had done little or nothing all day. To this, Radney replied, with an
oath, in a most domineering and outrageous manner unconditionally reiterating
his command; meanwhile advancing upon the still seated Lakeman, with an
unlifted cooper's club hammer which he had snatched from a cask near by.

"Heated and irritated as he was by his spasmodic toil at the pumps, for all his
first nameless feeling of forbearance the sweating Steelkilt could but ill brook
this bearing in the mate; but somehow still smothering the conflagration within
him, without speaking he remained doggedly rooted to his seat, till at last the
incensed Radney shook the hammer within a few inches of his face, furiously
commanding him to do his bidding.

"Steelkilt rose, and slowly retreating round the windless, steadily followed by
the mate with his menacing hammer, deliberately repeated his intention not to
obey. Seeing, however, that his forbearance had not the slightest effect, by an
awful and unspeakable intimation with his twisted hand he warned off the

foolish and infatuated man; but it was to no purpose. And in this way the two
went once slowly round the windlass; when, resolved at last no longer to retreat,
bethinking him that he had now forborne as much as comported with his humor,
the Lakeman paused on the hatches and thus spoke to the officer:

"'Mr. Radney, I will not obey you. Take that hammer away, or look to yourself.'
But the predestinated mate coming still closer to him, where the Lakeman stood
fixed, now shook the heavy hammer within an inch of his teeth; meanwhile
repeating a string of insufferable maledictions. Retreating not the thousandth
part of an inch; stabbing him in the eye with the unflinching poniard of his
glance, Steelkilt, clenching his right hand behind him and creepingly drawing it
back, told his persecutor that if the hammer but grazed his cheek he (Steelkilt)
would murder him. But, gentlemen, the fool had been branded for the slaughter
by the gods. Immediately the hammer touched the cheek; the next instant the
lower jaw of the mate was stove in his head; he fell on the hatch spouting blood
like a whale.

"Ere the cry could go aft Steelkilt was shaking one of the backstays leading far
aloft to where two of his comrades were standing their mastheads. They were
both Canallers.

"'Canallers!' cried Don Pedro. 'We have seen many whaleships in our harbors,
but never heard of your Canallers. Pardon: who and what are they?'

"'Canallers, Don, are the boatmen belonging to our grand Erie Canal. You must
have heard of it.'

"'Nay, Senor; hereabouts in this dull, warm, most lazy, and hereditary land, we
know but little of your vigorous North.'

"'Aye? Well then, Don, refill my cup. Your chicha's very fine; and ere
proceeding further I will tell ye what our Canallers are; for such information
may throw side-light upon my story.'

"For three hundred and sixty miles, gentlemen, through the entire breadth of the
state of New York; through numerous populous cities and most thriving
villages; through long, dismal, uninhabited swamps, and affluent, cultivated
fields, unrivalled for fertility; by billiard-room and bar-room; through the holy-
of-holies of great forests; on Roman arches over Indian rivers; through sun and
shade; by happy hearts or broken; through all the wide contrasting scenery of
those noble Mohawk counties; especially, by rows of snow-white chapels,
whose spires stand almost like milestones, flows one continual stream of
Venetianly corrupt and often lawless life. There's your true Ashantee,
gentlemen; there howl your pagans; where you ever find them, next door to you;
under the long-flung shadow, and the snug patronizing lee of churches. For by
some curious fatality, as it is often noted of your metropolitan freebooters that
they ever encamp around the halls of justice, so sinners, gentlemen, most
abound in holiest vicinities.

"'Is that a fair passing?' said Don Pedro, looking downwards into the crowded
plazza, with humorous concern.

"'Well for our northern friend, Dame Isabella's Inquisition wanes in Lima,'
laughed Don Sebastian. 'Proceed, Senor.'

"'A moment! Pardon!' cried another of the company. 'In the name of all us
Limeese, I but desire to express to you, sir sailor, that we have by no means
overlooked your delicacy in not substituting present Lima for distant Venice in
your corrupt comparison. Oh! do not bow and look surprised: you know the
proverb all along this coast- "Corrupt as Lima." It but bears out your saying,

too; churches more plentiful than billiard-tables, and for ever open-and "Corrupt
as Lima." So, too, Venice; I have been there; the holy city of the blessed
evangelist, St. Mark!- St. Dominic, purge it! Your cup! Thanks: here I refill;
now, you pour out again.'

"Freely depicted in his own vocation, gentlemen, the Canaller would make a
fine dramatic hero, so abundantly and picturesquely wicked he is. Like Mark
Antony, for days and days along his green-turfed, flowery Nile, he indolently
floats, openly toying with his red-cheeked Cleopatra, ripening his apricot thigh
upon the sunny deck. But ashore, all this effeminacy is dashed. The brigandish
guise which the Canaller so proudly sports; his slouched and gaily-ribboned hat
betoken his grand features. A terror to the smiling innocence of the villages
through which he floats; his swart visage and bold swagger are not unshunned
in cities. Once a vagabond on his own canal, I have received good turns from
one of these Canallers; I thank him heartily; would fain be not ungrateful; but it
is often one of the prime redeeming qualities of your man of violence, that at
times he has as stiff an arm to back a poor stranger in a strait, as to plunder a
wealthy one. In sum, gentlemen, what the wildness of this canal life is, is
emphatically evinced by this; that our wild whale-fishery contains so many of
its most finished graduates, and that scarce any race of mankind, except Sydney
men, are so much distrusted by our whaling captains. Nor does it at all diminish
the curiousness of this matter, that to many thousands of our rural boys and
young men born along its line, the probationary life of the Grand Canal
furnishes the sole transition between quietly reaping in a Christian corn-field,
and recklessly ploughing the waters of the most barbaric seas.

"'I see! I see!' impetuously exclaimed Don Pedro, spilling his chicha upon his
silvery ruffles. 'No need to travel! The world's one Lima. I had thought, now,
that at your temperate North the generations were cold and holy as the hills
But the story.'

"I had left off, gentlemen, where the Lakeman shook the backstay. Hardly had
he done so, when he was surrounded by the three junior mates and the four
harpooneers, who all crowded him to the deck. But sliding down the ropes like
baleful comets, the two Canallers rushed into the uproar, and sought to drag
their man out of it towards the forecastle. Others of the sailors joined with them
in this attempt, and a twisted turmoil ensued; while standing out of harm's way,
the valiant captain danced up and down with a whale-pike, calling upon his
officers to manhandle that atrocious scoundrel, and smoke him along to the
quarter-deck. At intervals, he ran close up to the revolving border of the
confusion, and prying into the heart of it with his pike, sought to prick out the
object of his resentment. But Steelkilt and his desperadoes were too much for
them all; they succeeded in gaining the forecastle deck, where, hastily slewing
about three or four large casks in a line with the windlass, these sea-Parisians
entrenched themselves behind the barricade.

"'Come out of that, ye pirates!' roared the captain, now menacing them with a
pistol in each hand, just brought to him by the steward. 'Come out of that, ye
cut-throats!'

"Steelkilt leaped on the barricade, and striding up and down there, defied the
worst the pistols could do; but gave the captain to understand distinctly, that his
(Steelkilt's) death would be the signal for a murderous mutiny on the part of all
hands. Fearing in his heart lest this might prove but too true, the captain a little
desisted, but still commanded the insurgents instantly to return to their duty.

"'Will you promise not to touch us, if we do?' demanded their ringleader.

"'Turn to! turn to!- I make no promise; to your duty! Do you want to sink the
ship, by knocking off at a time like this? Turn to!' and he once more raised a

pistol.

"'Sink the ship?' cried Steelkilt. 'Aye, let her sink. Not a man of us turns to,
unless you swear not to raise a rope-yarn against us. What say ye, men?' turning
to his comrades. A fierce cheer was their response.

"The Lakeman now patrolled the barricade, all the while keeping his eye on the
Captain, and jerking out such sentences as these:- 'It's not our fault; we didn't
want it; I told him to take his hammer away; it was boy's business; he might
have known me before this; I told him not to prick the buffalo; I believe I have
broken a finger here against his cursed jaw; ain't those mincing knives down in
the forecastle there, men? look to those handspikes, my hearties. Captain, by
God, look to yourself; say the word; don't be a fool; forget it all; we are ready to
turn to; treat us decently, and we're your men; but we won't be flogged.'

"'Turn to! I make no promises, turn to, I say!'

"'Look ye, now,' cried the Lakeman, flinging out his arm towards him, 'there are
a few of us here (and I am one of them) who have shipped for the cruise, d'ye
see; now as you well know, sir, we can claim our discharge as soon as the
anchor is down; so we don't want a row; it's not our interest; we want to be
peaceable; we are ready to work, but we won't be flogged.'

"'Turn to!' roared the Captain.

"Steelkilt glanced round him a moment, and then said:- 'I tell you what it is
now, Captain, rather than kill ye, and be hung for such a shabby rascal, we
won't lift a hand against ye unless ye attack us; but till you say the word about
not flogging us, we don't do a hand's turn.'

"'Down into the forecastle then, down with ye, I'll keep ye there till ye're sick of
it. Down ye go.'

"'Shall we?' cried the ringleader to his men. Most of them were against it; but at
length, in obedience to Steelkilt, they preceded him down into their dark den,
growlingly disappearing, like bears into a cave.

"As the Lakeman's bare head was just level with the planks, the Captain and his
posse leaped the barricade, and rapidly drawing over the slide of the scuttle,
planted their group of hands upon it, and loudly called for the steward to bring
the heavy brass padlock belonging to the companionway.

Then opening the slide a little, the Captain whispered something down the
crack, closed it, and turned the key upon them- ten in number- leaving on deck
some twenty or more, who thus far had remained neutral.

"All night a wide-awake watch was kept by all the officers, forward and aft,
especially about the forecastle scuttle and fore hatchway; at which last place it
was feared the insurgents might emerge, after breaking through the bulkhead
below. But the hours of darkness passed in peace; the men who still remained at
their duty toiling hard at the pumps, whose clinking and clanking at intervals
through the dreary night dismally resounded through the ship.

"At sunrise the Captain went forward, and knocking on the deck, summoned the
prisoners to work; but with a yell they refused. Water was then lowered down to
them, and a couple of handfuls of biscuit were tossed after it; when again
turning the key upon them and pocketing it, the Captain returned to the quarter-
deck. Twice every day for three days this was repeated; but on the fourth
morning a confused wrangling, and then a scuffling was heard, as the customary
summons was delivered; and suddenly four men burst up from the forecastle,

saying they were ready to turn to. The fetid closeness of the air, and a famishing
diet, united perhaps to some fears of ultimate retribution, had constrained them
to surrender at discretion. Emboldened by this, the Captain reiterated his
demand to the rest, but Steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific hint to stop his
babbling and betake himself where he belonged. On the fifth morning three
others of the mutineers bolted up into the air from the desperate arms below that
sought to restrain them. Only three were left.

"'Better turn to, now?' said the Captain with a heartless jeer.

"'Shut us up again, will ye!' cried Steelkilt.

"'Oh certainly,' the Captain, and the key clicked.

"It was at this point, gentlemen, that enraged by the defection of seven of his
former associates, and stung by the mocking voice that had last hailed him, and
maddened by his long entombment in a place as black as the bowels of despair;
it was then that Steelkilt proposed to the two Canallers, thus far apparently of
mind with him, to burst out of their hole at the next summoning of the garrison;
and armed with their keen mincing knives (long, crescentic, heavy implements
with a handle at each end) run amuck from the bowsprit to the taffrail; and if by
any devilishness of desperation possible, seize the ship. For himself, he would
do this, he said, whether they joined him or not. That was the last night he
should spend in that den. But the scheme met with no opposition on the part of
the other two; they swore they were ready for that, or for any other mad thing,
for anything in short but a surrender. And what was more, they each insisted
upon being the first man on deck, when the time to make the rush should come.
But to this their leader as fiercely objected, reserving that priority for himself;
particularly as his two comrades would not yield, the one to the other, in the
matter; and both of them could not be first, for the ladder would but admit one

man at a time. And here, gentlemen, the foul play of these miscreants must
come out.

"Upon hearing the frantic project of their leader, each in his own separate soul
had suddenly lighted, it would seem, upon the same piece of treachery, namely:
to be the foremost in breaking out, in order to be the first of the three, though
the last of the ten, to surrender; and thereby secure whatever small chance of
pardon such conduct might merit. But when Steelkilt made known his
determination still to lead them to the last, they in some way, by some subtle
chemistry of villany, mixed their before secret treacheries together; and when
their leader fell into a doze, verbally opened their souls to each other in three
sentences; and bound the sleeper with cords, and gagged him with cords; and
shrieked out for the Captain at midnight.

"Thinking murder at hand, and smelling in the dark for the blood, he and all his
armed mates and harpooneers rushed for the forecastle. In a few minutes the
scuttle was opened, and, bound hand and foot, the still struggling ringleader was
shoved up into the air by his perfidious allies, who at once claimed the honor of
securing a man who had been fully ripe for murder. But all these were collared,
and dragged along the deck like dead cattle; and, side by side, were seized up
into the mizzen rigging, like three quarters of meat, and there they hung till
morning. 'Damn ye,' cried the Captain, pacing to and fro before them, 'the
vultures would not touch ye, ye villains!'

"At sunrise he summoned all hands; and separating those who had rebelled from
those who had taken no part in the mutiny, he told the former he had a good
mind to flog them all round- thought, upon the while, he would do so- he ought
to- justice demanded it; but for the present, considering their timely surrender,
he would let them go with a reprimand, which he accordingly administered in
the vernacular.

"'But as for you, ye carrion rogues,' turning to the three men in the rigging- 'for
you, I mean to mince ye up for the try-pots;' and, seizing a rope, he applied it
with all his might to the backs of the two traitors, till they yelled no more, but
lifelessly hung their heads sideways, as the two crucified thieves are drawn.

"'My wrist is sprained with ye!' he cried, at last; 'but there is still rope enough
left for you, my fine bantam, that wouldn't give up. Take that gag from his
mouth, and let us hear what he can say for himself.'

"For a moment the exhausted mutineer made a tremulous motion of his cramped
jaws, and then painfully twisting round his head, said in a sort of hiss, 'What I
say is this- and mind it well- if you flog me, I murder you!'

"'Say ye so? then see how ye frighten me'- and the Captain drew off with the
rope to strike.

"'Best not,' hissed the Lakeman.

"'But I must,'- and the rope was once more drawn back for the stroke.

"Steelkilt here hissed out something, inaudible to all but the Captain; who, to
the amazement of all hands, started back, paced the deck rapidly two or three
times, and then suddenly throwing down his rope, said, 'I won't do it- let him
go- cut him down: d'ye hear?'

But as the junior mates were hurrying to execute the order, a pale man, with a
bandaged head, arrested them- Radney the chief mate. Ever since the blow, he
had lain in his berth; but that morning, hearing the tumult on the deck, he had
crept out, and thus far had watched the whole scene. Such was the state of his

mouth, that he could hardly speak; but mumbling something about his being
willing and able to do what the captain dared not attempt, he snatched the rope
and advanced to his pinioned foe.

"'You are a coward!' hissed the Lakeman.

"'So I am, but take that.' The mate was in the very act of striking, when another
hiss stayed his uplifted arm. He paused: and then pausing no more, made good
his word, spite of Steelkilt's threat, whatever that might have been. The three
men were then cut down, all hands were turned to, and, sullenly worked by the
moody seamen, the iron pumps clanged as before.

"Just after dark that day, when one watch had retired below, a clamor was heard
in the forecastle; and the two trembling traitors running up, besieged the cabin
door, saying they durst not consort with the crew. Entreaties, cuffs, and kicks
could not drive them back, so at their own instance they were put down in the
ship's run for salvation. Still, no sign of mutiny reappeared among the rest. On
the contrary, it seemed, that mainly at Steelkilt's instigation, they had resolved
to maintain the strictest peacefulness, obey all orders to the last, and, when the
ship reached port, desert her in a body. But in order to insure the speediest end
to the voyage, they all agreed to another thing- namely, not to sing out for
whales, in case any should be discovered. For, spite her leak, and spite of all her
other perils, the Town-Ho still maintained her mast-heads, and her captain was
just as willing to lower for a fish that moment, as on the day his craft struck the
cruising ground; and Radney the mate was quite as ready to change his berth for
a boat, and with his bandaged mouth seek to gag in death the vital jaw of the
whale.

"But though the Lakeman had induced the seamen to adopt this sort of
passiveness in their conduct, he kept his own counsel (at least till all was over)

concerning his own proper and private revenge upon the man who had stung
him in the ventricles of his heart. He was in Radney the chief mate's watch; and
as if the infatuated man sought to run more than half way to meet his doom,
after the scene at the rigging, he insisted, against the express counsel of the
captain, upon resuming the head of his watch at night. Upon this, and one or
two other circumstances, Steelkilt systematically built the plan of his revenge.

"During the night, Radney had an unseaman-like way of sitting on the bulwarks
of the quarterdeck, and leaning his arm upon the gunwale of the boat which was
hoisted up there, a little above the ship's side. In this attitude, it was well known,
he sometimes dozed. There was a considerable vacancy between the boat and
the ship, and down between this was the sea. Steelkilt calculated his time, and
found that his next trick at the helm would come round at two o'clock, in the
morning of the third day from that in which he had been betrayed. At his leisure,
he employed the interval in braiding something very carefully in his watches
below.

"'What are you making there?' said a shipmate.

"'What do you think? what does it look like?'

"'Like a lanyard for your bag; but it's an odd one, seems to me.'

'Yes, rather oddish,' said the Lakeman, holding it at arm's length before him;
'but I think it will answer. Shipmate, I haven't enough twine,- have you any?'

"But there was none in the forecastle.

"'Then I must get some from old Rad;' and he rose to go aft.

"'You don't mean to go a begging to him!' said a sailor.

"'Why not? Do you think he won't do me a turn, when it's to help himself in the
end, shipmate?' and going to the mate, he looked at him quietly, and asked him
for some twine to mend his hammock. It was given him- neither twine nor
lanyard were seen again; but the next night an iron ball, closely netted, partly
rolled from the pocket of the Lakeman's monkey jacket, as he was tucking the
coat into his hammock for a pillow. Twenty-four hours after, his trick at the
silent helm- nigh to the man who was apt to doze over the grave always ready
dug to the seaman's hand- that fatal hour was then to come; and in the fore-
ordaining soul of Steelkilt, the mate was already stark and stretched as a corpse,
with his forehead crushed in.

"But, gentlemen, a fool saved the would-be murderer from the bloody deed he
had planned. Yet complete revenge he had, and without being the avenger. For
by a mysterious fatality, Heaven itself seemed to step in to take out of his hands
into its own the damning thing he would have done.

"It was just between daybreak and sunrise of the morning of the second day,
when they were washing down the decks, that a stupid Teneriffe man, drawing
water in the main-chains, all at once shouted out, 'There she rolls! there she
rolls!' Jesu, what a whale! It was Moby Dick.

"'Moby Dick!' cried Don Sebastian; 'St. Dominic! Sir sailor, but do whales have
christenings? Whom call you Moby Dick?'

"'A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal monster, Don;- but that
would be too long a story.'

"'How? how?' cried all the young Spaniards, crowding.

"'Nay, Dons, Dons- nay, nay! I cannot rehearse that now. Let me get more into
the air, Sirs.'

"'The chicha! the chicha!' cried Don Pedro; 'our vigorous friend faint;- fill up his
empty glass!'

"No need, gentlemen; one moment, and I proceed Now, gentlemen, so
suddenly perceiving the snowy whale within fifty yards of the ship- forgetful of
the compact among the crew- in the excitement of the moment, the Teneriffe
man had instinctively and involuntarily lifted his voice for the monster, though
for some little time past it had been plainly beheld from the three sullen mast-
heads. All was now a phrensy. 'The White Whale- the White Whale!' was the
cry from captain, mates, and harpooneers, who, undeterred by fearful rumours,
were all anxious to capture so famous and precious a fish; while the dogged
crew eyed askance, and with curses, the appalling beauty of the vast milky
mass, that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and glistened like a living
opal in the blue morning sea. Gentlemen, a strange fatality pervades the whole
career of these events, as if verily mapped out before the world itself was
charted. The mutineer was the bowsman of the mate, and when fast to a fish, it
was his duty to sit next him, while Radney stood up with his lance in the prow,
and haul in or slacken the line, at the word of command. Moreover, when the
four boats were lowered, the mate's got the start; and none howled more fiercely
with delight than did Steelkilt, as he strained at his oar. After a stiff pull, their
harpooneer got fast, and, spear in hand, Radney sprang to the bow. He was
always a furious man, it seems, in a boat. And now his bandaged cry was, to
beach him on the whale's topmost back. Nothing loath, his bowsman hauled him
up and up, through a blinding foam that blent two whitenesses together; till of a
sudden the boat struck as against a sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled out
the standing mate. That instant, as he fell on the whale's slippery back, the boat

righted, and was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney was tossed over into
the sea, on the other flank of the whale. He struck out through the spray, and,
for an instant, was dimly seen through that veil, wildly seeking to remove
himself from the eye of Moby Dick. But the whale rushed round in a sudden
maelstrom; seized the swimmer between his jaws; and rearing high up with him,
plunged headlong again, and went down.

"Meantime, at the first tap of the boat's bottom, the Lakeman had slackened the
line, so as to drop astern from the whirlpool; calmly looking on, lie thought his
own thoughts. But a sudden, terrific, downward jerking of the boat, quickly
brought his knife to the line. He cut it; and the whale was free. But, at some
distance, Moby Dick rose again, with some tatters of Radney's red woolen shirt,
caught in the teeth that had destroyed him. All four boats gave chase again; but
the whale eluded them, and finally wholly disappeared.

"In good time, the Town-Ho reached her port- a savage, solitary place- where
no civilized creature resided. There, headed by the Lakeman, all but five or six
of the foremastmen deliberately deserted among the palms; eventually, as it
turned out, seizing a large double war-canoe of the savages, and setting sail for
some other harbor.

"The ship's company being reduced to but a handful, the captain called upon the
Islanders to assist him in the laborious business of heaving down the ship to
stop the leak. But to such unresting vigilance over their dangerous allies was
this small band of whites necessitated, both by night and by day, and so extreme
was the hard work they underwent, that upon the vessel being ready again for
sea, they were in such a weakened condition that the captain durst not put off
with them in so heavy a vessel. After taking counsel with his officers, he
anchored the ship as far off shore as possible; loaded and ran out his two cannon
from the bows; stacked his muskets on the poop; and warning the Islanders not

to approach the ship at their peril, took one man with him, and setting the sail of
his best whale-boat, steered straight before the wind for Tahiti, five hundred
miles distant, to procure a reinforcement to his crew.

"On the fourth day of the sail, a large canoe was descried, which seemed to have
touched at a low isle of corals. He steered away from it; but the savage craft
bore down on him; and soon the voice of Steelkilt hailed him to heave to, or he
would run him under water. The captain presented a pistol. With one foot on
each prow of the yoked war-canoes, the Lakeman laughed him to scorn;
assuring him that if the pistol so much as clicked in the lock, he would bury him
in bubbles and foam.

"'What do you want of me?' cried the captain.

"'Where are you bound? and for what are you bound?' demanded Steelkilt; 'no
lies.'

"'I am bound to Tahiti for more men.'

"'Very good. Let me board you a moment- I come in peace.' With that he leaped
from the canoe, swam to the boat; and climbing the gunwale, stood face to face
with the captain.

"'Cross your arms, sir; throw back your head. Now, repeat after me. As soon as
Steelkilt leaves me, I swear to beach this boat on yonder island, and remain
there six days. If I do not, may lightning strike me!'

"'A pretty scholar,' laughed the Lakeman. 'Adios, Senor!' and leaping into the
sea, he swam back to his comrades.

"Watching the boat till it was fairly beached, and drawn up to the roots of the
cocoa-nut trees, Steelkilt made sail again, and in due time arrived at Tahiti, his
own place of destination. There, luck befriended him; two ships were about to
sail for France, and were providentially in want of precisely that number of men
which the sailor headed. They embarked, and so for ever got the start of their
former captain, had he been at all minded to work them legal retribution.

"Some ten days after the French ships sailed, the whale-boat arrived, and the
captain was forced to enlist some of the more civilized Tahitians, who had been
somewhat used to the sea. Chartering a small native schooner, he returned with
them to his vessel; and finding all right there, again resumed his cruisings.

"Where Steelkilt now is, gentlemen, none know; but upon the island of
Nantucket, the widow of Radney still turns to the sea which refuses to give up
its dead; still in dreams sees the awful white whale that destroyed him.

"'Are you through?' said Don Sebastian, quietly.

"'I am, Don.'

"'Then I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own convictions, this your
story is in substance really true? It is so passing wonderful! Did you get it from
an unquestionable source? Bear with me if I seem to press.'

"'Also bear with all of us, sir sailor; for we all join in Don Sebastian's suit,' cried
the company, with exceeding interest.

"'Is there a copy of the Holy Evangelists in the Golden Inn, gentlemen?'

"'Nay,' said Don Sebastian; 'but I know a worthy priest near by, who will

quickly procure one for me. I go for it; but are you well advised? this may grow
too serious.'

"'Will you be so good as to bring the priest also, Don?'